


even mollusks have weddings

by Byacolate



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Coping, Cultural Differences, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Dwarf Marriage, F/M, Marriage, Marriage Proposal, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tattoos, Trespasser DLC, Trespasser Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 09:01:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4781540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byacolate/pseuds/Byacolate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the end, he does it himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	even mollusks have weddings

In the end, he does it himself.

 

It‘s not his first amputation, and it won‘t be the last. They‘re ass-deep in the Fade, and they are none of them healers, but they‘re out of options now that Solas has vanished. The Bull‘s axe pulses, fire rune flaring to life under his touch and he‘s always been wary of magic, but thanks fuck, Fen‘Harel, and Dagna for it now.

 

Cole mops her brow and murmurs with her head in his lap as Cassandra, pale as the Bull‘s ever seen her, goes to her knees to join them.

 

“It‘s fine,” she gasps, “I‘m fine. It can wait.”

 

A bright, sickening crack of green ignites in her hand and up her arm, and he sets his jaw. “Nah. It really won‘t.”

 

The Bull and that arm, they‘ve been through some shit. Demons, mostly. Fade rifts. Drinking competitions. Athletic sex. It‘s attached to the woman he loves. It‘s a damn fine part of her.

 

And she‘s a damn fine part of _him_ , which is what makes it so easy to tamp down on the nausea roiling in his gut at the thought of what he must do. Because it must be done. It’s the arm or her, and that’s an easy choice.

 

Whatever weird friendship she’d forged spending hours asking questions of their comrade-turned-rebel-deity in years past has afforded them the gift of time, and the Bull isn’t going to waste it.

 

Cassandra looks like she’s going to be ill, but her hands are steady as she helps Cole unbuckle Cadash’s armor, piece by piece. The Mark pulses and the cloth under her armor is soaked in sweat when the Bull peels it from her body. She spasms with the effort to keep from clutching the arm to her chest, and Bull can’t think about it, cleaving at her with a blade, so he doesn’t. In nothing from the waist up but a breast band, he can see how far the Mark has progressed, and where Solas stopped it from furthering.

 

He cups her face in his hand for a fleeting second, meets her eyes. She’s warm under his hand, and he won’t let her go cold. Not for this. Not for something he can fix. She keeps his eyes steadily and nods, so he lets her go to be moved into place by the people who care and settles onto his knees with a grunt.

 

Wherever they are, it’s damn pretty. Dawn lights everything up in gold - the fallen leaves, the tall tall trees, the upright Antaam turned to stone. Her blood doesn’t even have time to spill and marr the foliage when he sets his blade to her flesh. The rune cauterizes the wound almost as quickly as he cuts her arm off just above the elbow.

 

The leather glove Cassandra had the foresight to shove in her mouth is tooth-marked deep, and the moment it’s done, the Seeker takes it from her and replaces it with an elfroot potion. It’s funny, in an abstract sort of way. It’ll only numb the pain keep her from puking her guts up for an hour, tops. It’s not gonna fix her arm, or change the fact that it’s just lying there on the ground beside her, separated from her body.

 

Only in the abstract, though. He’s not thinking about it.

 

“What will we do with your arm,” Cole asks, and Cassandra manages to look insulted even though she’s nearly as green as the fading Mark when he picks up the limb, steaming at the blackened stump.

 

Well. She‘s got prayer for that.

 

“Keep it,” Cadash says, flat on her back with a laugh bordering on hysteria. “An antiquarian in Kirkwall wants it.”

 

Bull hefts the axe back over his shoulder before he bends down to scoop Cadash into his arms. Careful. Easy. “Sure,” he says, nearly crushing her to his chest. Not thinking about it. “Whatever you want, Kadan.”

 

 

* * *

 

She‘s always used a bow.

 

He knows because he asked once, years ago. Had to admire her for it, too. He‘s always held archers in damn high regard, for ranged fighters. But a dwarf skilled with a longbow nearly as tall as she sounds like the start of a bad joke in theory, but in practice, it‘s pretty kickass to watch.

 

She can use daggers in a pinch - he‘s seen her toss them double-fisted, coated in poison, with enough force to fell a gurgut - but it isn‘t the same. Asked her about that once, too; ribbed her about her appreciation for variety, and she brought him along to the Emprise with only a mace and shield.

 

When she gifts her bows to Sera, something in the Bull’s ribs constricts. Sera is outraged, and then she cries, loud and wet and real. She shuts Cadash away in her room for a time, practically above Bull’s head, where she carries on crying and lashing out when Cadash tries to console her. Probably because Cadash tries to console her.

 

She can’t shoot anymore, and she doesn’t want them to go to waste. Sera will take good care of them, her prized and precious longbows. It’s her choice. Bull feels a golden swell of pride that she’s made it.

 

Cadash carries on with the same easy smile, and he doesn’t ask, but he knows. She stares at her callus-rough fingers sometimes when she drinks with a face so open, he doesn’t need to be Cole to read her. The Bull can see her wondering how long it will take for her hands to go soft with disuse, how long the proof of what she once could do disappears from her body entirely.

 

Usually, she excuses herself to disappear from the Herald’s Rest. And usually, he finds her in their room, hidden away on the balcony with a bottle of something stronger than tavern ale in her only hand, face streaked and stained, and puts her to bed.

 

Normally, though, she keeps it under lock and key.

 

Even from him. Even from herself.

 

 

* * *

 

It sticks in his head, what she’d mentioned before and then never again. It prickles at him because she’s never mentioned it, not once since that afternoon in the makeshift tavern.  

 

She’s coping, or trying to. He gets that. But there’s a fine line between compartmentalization and repression, and he’s not sure whether she’s tripped and stumbled over it.

 

She busts her ass to act like nothing‘s changed, not on a personal level, which only makes her silence about the proposal all the stranger.

 

But the Bull is patient. He waits. And he waits. And he waits. And then he stops the waiting when he realizes that where it will lead is nowhere, because he knows her, stubborn and self-assured. If she hasn‘t said anything, it‘s because she doesn‘t intend to.

 

The Bull doesn‘t care so much about the proposal or what it entails. What he cares about is what it meant to her to have said it, and what it means now that she‘s put it behind herself.

 

He has his theories, but what she needs isn‘t theoretical.

 

“So,” he says one morning, rubbing horn balm into his skin. “Spring wedding?”

 

“Whose?” she asks, buttoning her coat one-handed. He leans forward onto his elbow to cap the balm, eyebrows raised. She lifts her head a moment later to raise them right back.

 

“Oh, come on,” he says, rubbing the excess off onto his ankles. “You’re gonna propose to a guy and drop it without a word? That’s cold, Kadan.”

 

She blinks. “As I recall, you weren’t exactly interested.”

 

“I’m wasn’t interested in that deep mushroom stew your mother bullied me into eating the last time she came to visit,” he says with a slow grin, “but I didn’t down half a barrel just so she could watch me flex. I did it because you loved that shit. And I’d do it again. I don’t understand your terrible taste in food or why you wanna tie the knot, but I like to see you happy.”

 

“Marrying me is on par with my mother’s stew, is it?” she asks, standing close enough that he can just reach out and tug her closer by the belt loops.

 

“Nah,” he says. “Marriage is definitely weirder.”

 

She lifts her hand to his craggy face, too deep in thought for him to decipher.

 

“No,” she says finally, cuffing her sleeve elbow before she pulls out of his grip. “I don’t want a spring wedding.”

 

He’s not disappointed. He’s… something.

 

“Whatever you want, Kadan.”

 

Bull needs to get dressed sometime, probably. His pants are around here somewhere, and the Chargers need to run some drills, and Sera wanted to -

 

“I don’t know what made you think I was proposing a human matrimonial ceremony, anyway,” she continues, combing idly through her mussed hair with her fingers as she nudges the balcony doors open with her hip. A cool breeze fills the room and sweeps a couple reports off her desk. Neither pay them any mind.

 

The Bull blinks twice.

 

“... What?”

 

 

* * *

 

“What.”

 

Rocky’s mustache shifts when he smirks. Krem sits back, quietly amused, the rest less so. Dalish snickers behind her palm, and Skinner mutters something Orlesian and likely less than complimentary to to Grim. Stitches tuts, sipping at his ale.

 

“And that’s just a thing? That’s it? You don’t do it like humans?”

 

“Neither do we,” Dalish piped in, but Rocky waved her off.

 

“Nobody’s talking about singing life vows naked in the woods under the pale moonlight, elfy.”

 

“Well, maybe you should!”

 

Bull knew Rocky’s palms were covered in tattoos - had been when he joined up, only faded with time. He’d also known Rocky’d had a husband, once. Didn’t talk about it much. Didn’t need to. Bull had never considered the two factsmight be anything but mutually exclusive.

 

“Kinda disappointed in you, Chief,” he said, opening his hands for Bull’s perusal. “Dunno why you’re so surprised. She Qunari-married you, didn’t she.”

 

He flicks the dragon tooth on Bull’s chest, and Bull narrows his eye in warning. “It’s really not the same thing.”

 

“Isn’t it?” Krem says, tapping the rim of his mug. “Well. Not the _same_ thing, obviously, but the, uh.” He waves his hand flippantly in the air. “The principle of the thing. Y’know. Symbolism. Little rites and rituals of a promise bond.”

 

The Bull’s brow furrows. “Qunari don’t marry. It’s not -”

 

“And dwarves don’t hold hands before a priest and swear to some unseen hand in the sky that we’re gonna do right by each other,” Rocky cuts him off. “Humans crowd together and proclaim their _feelings_ and _intentions_ with all their family and friends oggling. Qunari go spelunking in dragon maws and make jewelry. We sit each other down ink our hands raw when we really mean it. Words are cheap. This,” he says, flexing his fingers to draw Bull’s eye back to the old green geometrical patterns smothering both of his palms, “is how we know when it counts.”

 

He gives the Bull only a second to contemplate this before he says, “And now she’s only got the one arm. I figure she didn’t foresee that when she asked for your hand. Maybe that’s got her hung up.”

 

“You’ve been Qunari-married for years now,” Krem says, like it’s just dawned on him.

 

"The next asshole who says _Qunari-married_ earns twenty laps for every other asshole who encouraged it."

 

“We didn’t even get you a _gift_.”

 

Grim grunts his opinion on the matter rather eloquently, if Skinner’s accompanying glower is any judge. The dragon tooth is a weight on his chest that grows heavier every minute he has to think.

 

“Well,” he says finally, hefting himself up from the table, “shit.”

 

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t hesitate. Not for a minute. Because they’re right, and he’s an idiot not to have noticed, and the tattoo thing is pretty kickass. But more importantly, she deserves the same rush, the same comfort, the same pull that he feels every day to bear the weight of such a promise around his neck. It’s a choice he makes every day to love her. And it’s a choice he makes now to etch that into her skin.

 

Balance. Symbiosis. Partnership.

 

It’s almost like she doesn’t really believe him, up until the afternoon she lays out inks and needles, royal elfroot paste and clean cloth on the furs of their bedroom floor. Even as he rests his hand in her lap, she regards him with steady eyes. The same eyes she wore when she made the choice for him to save his men when he couldn’t fathom the choosing. The same eyes she wore when she tore down a would-be god. The same eyes she wore when he gripped his axe to cleave her arm from her body. “Nothing will change if you’d prefer not to do this,” she says one final time. “You don’t need to bind yourself to me for me to know what we are.”

 

He grins, a lopsided thing he knows she loves, and runs his thumb over her palm. “Sounds like you’ve got the pre-wedding jitters. Or maybe you’re a bashful artist?”

 

She lifts a needle and sets to work with a little smile on her mouth he wouldn’t kiss away for the world.

 

They don’t speak. They don’t need to. She pricks and pricks and dabs the blood away, thick black lines over his knuckles, the back of his hand, around his wrists. There are no spoken vows, he’s told. Not really. There can be, but they’re superfluous, considering the marks they make upon each other are the true vows here.

 

It isn’t a ceremony, he doesn’t think. It’s too simple. It’s two people sitting quietly, carving their heart into the other’s hands. Symbolism, Krem had said, and when isn’t he right.

 

The steady, solid lines and blocky shapes are entirely dwarven. The first are black to match the tattoos over his shoulders, but once night falls and they must light candles to continue, she brackets each line with white ink to match her own tattoos. Part for him; part for her. Rocky’d told him that any dwarf that saw him with ink vows would know him promised, honorary salroka, and Bull grins so hard he thinks it’s going to split his face.

 

He’s blood-stung and sore by the time she coats the backs of his hands and his wrists with salve, and an entire candle has burned to the nub, but they’re far from done. It’s his turn now, and they won’t leave the room, they won’t stop until every last vow has been pricked.

 

All part of the ritual.

 

The sun is up and fills the room with golden light by the time he lays down his needle to survey his work. He’d be lying if he said he’d worked entirely free of bias, as if the similarities to his own old tattoos crawling up her arm were a coincidence. He’d started with her fingers, jagged shapes and climbing smoke, rising trees and the red of flying embers. With only an arm and a half to work with, he figured he needed to make it count.

 

She didn’t cry until her arm was salved and bandaged, and he hummed at the handiwork of a pair of horns and teeth banding round and around the stump of her elbow.  

 

If he didn’t know better, he’d say it wasn’t from the pain and sleep deprivation at all.

 

 

* * *

 

And then, one day, Sera scales the keep to the balcony and leaps into the room while she’s going over reports in her skivvies on his knee (“Boring _and_ ugh!”), thrusting a contraption forward. He doesn’t have the time to wonder how she climbed all the way up to the Inquisitor’s window with that hunk of metal in her care - and why would she when she can pick the lock to the stairs, admirable theatrics aside - because he knows what it is.

 

“Widdle’s been working on it for ages,” Sera says, grinning like she’s on the other side of such a gift. “So you know it’s good. Wanted it to be a surprise.”

 

She holds the device up for proper inspection then, and the Bull is impressed. It’s an arm.

 

Well. It could be. It’s crafted from dragon bone - malleable stuff, smooth as stagnant water when sanded and polished, wouldn’t chafe, good choice - with butter-soft leather straps and obsidian buckles at the base. The rest of it below the pair of bands that would cuff to Cadash’s arm is an intricate system of pulleys and gears that lead their way to a perfectly dwarf-sized, five-fingered hand.

 

“See, it’s sort of just a useless toy now… I mean, well, you could probably cave some cheeky pissant’s dick in with the right swing, but Widdle’s been talking about a rune that’ll read your friggin’ mind or somethin’ and it’ll be like the real thing but better, maybe, and when it is - I mean, when you are - when you do get the hang of it, you can take your stupid bows back, yeah?”

 

Somewhere along the way, Sera’s started to tear up, and Cadash has gone very still damp-eyed in his lap, and the Bull can’t really excuse himself from the situation so he just… takes it from Sera’s grip before they can rust the gears.  

 

“What have you got against my bows,” Cadash says, voice suspiciously thick as she unbuttons her cuff for Bull. He wants to see how it’ll fit against her arm, if they need to make adjustments. If he keeps his hands idle, he’ll be tempted to do something unwise, like squeeze her so tightly she bursts.

 

Sera sniffles and punches Cadash’s shoulder. “They’re clutterin’ up the place!”

 

“Knew a guy in Seheron once,” Bull said, fastening the cuffs to her arm just below the band of his vows, “with two of these things. Right was a hand of wood. Left was a crossbow.”

 

Sera laughs shrilly and tells him, “Okay, but I’ve been thinking, and get this, right - _grappling hook!_ ” and in his arms, Cadash draws her fingers over the palm of the contraption and the little hole where a rune might fit.

 

She leans back into him with an ease he hasn’t seen in months and a smile that seeps through every crevice of his brittle concern.

 

Oh yeah, he thinks. He’s definitely gonna get her a crossbow arm.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Joanna Newsom's "Inflammatory Writ": _But what's it mean when suddenly we're spent / Tell me true ambition came and reared its head and went far from you / Even mollusks have weddings, though solemn and leaden_
> 
>    
> Inquire about commissioning me [here!](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/ask)  
> If you are so inclined, feel free to follow [my Tumblr](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/).


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